Trump publicly denies involvement while calling Omar ‘a disaster’
Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, DC, on October 12 while she was there with her husband, the BBC reported. The search warrant was approved by a court, the Justice Department said; the nature of the criminal investigation remains unclear. “This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” the Justice Department said in a statement at the time.
Omar characterized the search as “the latest escalation” in President Donald Trump’s “campaign of political intimidation” in a post on X. “I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” she wrote, adding: “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. I will not be silenced.” Trump has said the investigation has “nothing to do with me.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that agents seized Omar’s cellphone, notebooks, personal computers and passport during the search. Fox News reported that investigators have since issued more than a dozen subpoenas to members of her family.
Multiple US media outlets have reported that the investigation centers on Omar’s US citizenship — which she received in 2000 after her arrival from Kenya — and on whether she lied about her age when she entered the country in 1995. According to US media, the crux of the inquiry is whether her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, misrepresented her age on her citizenship application, writing that she was 17 rather than 18. If Omar was 18 at the time her father applied for citizenship, she would have needed to pursue her own immigration process separately.
The investigation has also raised questions about Omar’s marriages. Trump is among those who have accused her of marrying her brother to obtain US citizenship, an allegation she has denied. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office is investigating Omar’s financial disclosures in connection with her current marriage to former Democratic political consultant Timothy Mynett. Omar has denied any wrongdoing and called the investigations “complete shams.” Mynett told Fox News that Omar came to the United States at age 12 as a war refugee and said he has “no concerns” about her citizenship.
Omar was born in Somalia and fled with her family to a refugee camp in Kenya before arriving in the United States in 1995 with her father and others. The family initially settled in Washington before relocating to Minnesota, and Omar became a naturalized US citizen in 2000. Her father worked as a cabdriver and a postal worker; Omar has described him as an educator and said he died in 2020 from complications of Covid-19.
The New York Post, citing Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, a historian and Oxford University doctoral researcher, reported that Mohamed “misrepresented himself as a refugee” and held a decades-long military career, including a leadership position in former Somali President Siad Barre’s military dictatorship. Barre seized power in Somalia in a bloodless coup in 1969; his supporters saw him as a pan-Africanist who supported causes such as the campaign against South Africa’s racist system of apartheid, while his critics viewed him as a dictator who oversaw numerous human rights abuses until he was driven from power in 1991. Ingiriis told the Post that Mohamed “was a full colonel in Siad Barre’s military regime” and that “Ilhan’s father was never an educator.” The BBC said it had reached out to Omar for comment on the allegations.
The search and the subpoenas fit the pattern of civil denaturalization, a process in which the Justice Department files a lawsuit arguing that a naturalized citizen lied in a material way on their application. The BBC reported that the Trump administration has made a concerted effort to detain and deport immigrants suspected of being in the US illegally, and that permanent residents and green card holders have also been affected. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan data research organization, the Trump administration has filed a surge of denaturalization lawsuits. Trump has repeatedly called for Omar to be deported, urging her to “go back” to Somalia.
At a rally in Ohio on Monday, Trump referenced the search of Omar’s home: “I don’t know what they’re doing with it, but I can tell you this: she’s a disaster.” He continued with remarks denigrating Somalis in the United States more broadly, drawing chants of “deport” from the crowd.
The timing of the federal probe has defied a Justice Department precedent of avoiding action against officials running for office in the weeks before an election. The search came weeks before the November midterm elections, drawing condemnation from Democratic colleagues who said Omar had been subject to relentless “vile personal attacks and baseless accusations.” Earlier this year, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina unsuccessfully sought a subpoena for Omar’s records, and her immigration records have been the subject of past Republican-led inquiries.